Search tag: "united"

I got some United toys today from Japan! One of them was Windcharger versus Wipe-Out. I already have a Windcharger, so the United one went immediately on eBay. Go bid on him! I kept the Reveal the Shield one I already had 'cuz I like rub signs. Bidding started at $5 and the auction lasts five days.

Wipe-Out was the real prize! He's so awesome I'd buy Windcharger twice. I talked about Wipe-Out's origins in a previous blog post, which is totally linked right here. Suffice to say, he was a character made up for the Marvel stories. Why Japan-the-land-of-no-Marvel-Transformers-comics is doing him I have no idea, but I'm incredibly grateful all the same.

It may amaze you, but Wipe-Out is Windcharger in black and blue. To my eye he has two fewer paint apps than Windcharger, missing the paint around his grill and the vent on his hood. (Neither of those are necessary here, so I don't miss them or anything.) Instead of the flat black painted windows Windcharger has, Wipe-Out has glittery blue painted windows which look very nice.

But mostly I'm stoked that this is a friggin' Wipe-Out toy. And suddenly I neeeeeeeeeeeeeeed an original Trypticon. Man, Metroplex got reissued, so I demand Trypticon be next. It's kind of weird having Wipe-Out be sycophantic to some dude that's shorter than him.

I got United Tank Megatron shipped to me along with my Windcharger/Wipe-Out, but the deluge of Prime toys that happened shortly thereafter kept me from talking about him until now. Priorities, man!

I got Tank Megatron for a few reasons. First, I've never owned the Classics-era Deluxe tank Megatron toy. They kept on redecoing him as Megatron, and I didn't need another Megatron. So this was a new toy to me.

Secondly, on the tail of the first reason, a character who isn't Megatron shares these colors. Late in Generation 2 there was a "Hero" Megatron toy that was purple and blue and orange in black camo. I own it, in fact! ...even though it's broken in places and missing some accessories. It was one of my first BotCon purchases. But in Europe, that toy was released as a different guy called Archforce. All they did was modify the sticker on the underside of his chest that said "MEGATRON RULES" to say nothing at all. (I love that sticker, by the way.) This new Tank Megatron doesn't have any "MEGATRON RULES" on him, so that says Archforce to me! Sweet, an Archforce toy.

And most importantly, the thing just looks damn pretty.

Reviews of the toy were not very favorable, so I knew I wasn't getting a spectacular figure. He's not bad or terrible. He's sort of in the middle there. Most people seemed to hate that Megatron didn't have two proper hands. His cannon arm was actually a gimmicked propeller-spinning thing, commonly called a "rotate blade." You fold out his cannon in front of his wrist and press a lever on the arm, causing the thing to spin. There's no hand on that arm, so folks got annoyed. I've got plenty of Megatrons with two hands, and my mental picture of Archforce doesn't demand a number of hands, so the gimmick doesn't bother me. Besides, I love rotate blades.

He's a pretty toy who I can easily repurpose as an obscure dude I don't own. I should probably throw a G2 symbol sticker on him.

We've gotten quite a few new Stepper/Ricochets over the years, but never a new toy of his buddy Artfire until now. The pair exist because Japan didn't want to do Cyclonus and Scourge as Targetmasters, I guess, and so they gave their Targetmaster partners to redecos of the Jazz and Inferno toys. Redoing white Jazz toys in black as Stepper/Ricochet makes pretty solid retail sense, but redoing the red Inferno as, uh, mostly red Artfire probably seems like a less good idea. Artfire was never very visually distinct from Inferno, roughly being an Inferno with a white chest, so that's likely why he hasn't shown up until now. (Also because we get a dozen times more Jazz toys than Infernos.)

But somebody over in Japan was willing to do an Artfire as an exclusive, so here we are. He's got Inferno's head and hands and the Grapple retool's crane arm, so he's a parts combination that hasn't been done before. Artfire also comes with two Targetmasters, one being the fifteen zillionth redeco of Universe Nightstick and the other being a redeco of one of Power Core Combiner Pinpoint. The former is intended to be Artfire's original partner, Nightstick, whose name causes the Transformers Wiki much grief, and the latter is intended to be Sparks, which was the Marvel Comics name for Firebolt, Hot Rod's Targetmaster partner.

Because Artfire has Grapple's crane and not a ladder, the instructions tell you to peg both of his Targetmaster partners through the crane's hook so it becomes this sort of water cannon thing. Inventive!

I KIND OF HAVE A LOT OF THIS MOLD.

At least there's three different heads to go between them. (You'll note the handpainted Hot Spot head I gave to my Pyro.) There aren't many G1 firetrucks even left to still make this guy into. There's probably still a Micromaster firetruck, right? And Hosehead. Both of whom are probably red and black, so, well, you know. And, heck, they could probably still get away with making a Hauler, and I would be very happy to buy it. I say that not only because I don't have an original Hauler (I got my Sunstorm long after he was released and so after the duo had been split up on the secondary market), but because I still really like this toy. And thank god for that.

I was surprised at the number of vendors selling Transformers at Calgary Expo. It was a sizable representation! Quite a few booths were Transformers-only.

For example, there was this booth at the back of the hall, and, huh, they had mint carded 1984 Frenzy/Laserbeak and Rumble/Ravage sets for like $20 and, weird, is that a boxed Sunstreaker for $40? ...oh. Right. I see. Counterfeit. Just buttloads of counterfeit Transformers. You'd only know because they weren't hundreds of dollars. (Well, there are really slight ways to tell from examining the specifics of the packaging, like if something or another is a millimeter to the left, but that is not knowledge I possess.) Thought that was kinda skeevy. The guy who was selling them referred to them as "reprints." I suppose that's a euphemism.

But actual Transformers that were real Transformers made by real Transformers factories weren't badly priced, either! Like the Axalon here. I think when he came out he was like $50 to import. He's just a deluxe, but he's "limited run" or something, and TakaraTomy needed the dough I guess and so they cranked up the prices for this leg of United stuff. But a booth at Calgary Expo had him for $30! Canadian! That's like $25 American. So I scooped up the heck outta that.

And then Air Canada lost my luggage on the way home (nearly getting me stranded in Toronto since you can't go through customs if your luggage ain't security-cleared) and it took a few days for me to get him home.

BUT WHO IS HE?

He's, uh, the Axalon. The Maximal ship from Beast Wars. As a robot. Look, okay, Takara released the Deluxe Class bug-machine-tank-thinger Unicron as "Ark Unicron," aka "The Autobot Ship Is Possessed By Unicron Or Something" and so the story is that Primus made the Axalon be alive too in order to fight him. Crazy, right? It's the kind of crazy I'd buy for $25 but not $50.

And, look, yes, I know, he has an Autobot symbol on him despite being a Maximal ship, and yes, I know that his toy was designed to be the Nemesis, an entirely different ship which was also around at the time so why is it the Axalon, but...

Magnificus is a new character based on the pre-Transformers version of Perceptor, who was, well, a black version of Perceptor. He was established as his own guy by e-Hobby in 2005, when they released a black version of the original Perceptor (with a Micronauts partner named Ga'mede).

I don't have that guy.

But e-Hobby (and Fun Publications?) just did a black version of the most recent Perceptor toy as Magnificus, and now I have that! Built into the original tooling was a toy-accurate alternate head for the toy, which basically works as a Magnificus head and few other things, so that's pretty fortunate. He's, well, a black Perceptor. Not terribly exciting on the face of it, but I do like being able to see/own the tooling's alternate head. Also, it's a character I didn't already have around, so he's not doubling up on any guy I already have.

What's super-great is the comic this dude comes with. It's only six pages, but it's got art by the great Hidetsugu Yoshioka and it features Magnificus (and his still-tiny pal Ga'mede) fighting one of the unreleased Double Pretender guys -- specifically the gorilla. He's got a name now and he's drawn pretty radly. I like him a lot. All toys should come with fiction!

The toy itself is still Perceptor, which is not exactly a beloved pile of engineering, but I never disliked it as much as some other people did. However, I do have more trouble getting Magnificus's shoulder/backpack arrangement to consolidate into the torso than I did Perceptor's, so he requires a bit extra fiddling.